The Other Brain: From Dementia to Schizophrenia, How New Discoveries About the Brain are Revolutionizing Medicine and Science

Despite everything that has been written about the brain, a very important part of this vital organ has been overlooked in most books - until now. The Other Brain is the story of glia, which make up approximately 85 percent of the cells in the brain. Long neglected as little more than cerebral packing material ("glia" means glue), glia are sparking a revolution in brain science.

Leonardo's Brain: Understanding da Vinci's Creative Genius

Bestselling author Leonard Shlain explores the life, art, and mind of Leonardo da Vinci, seeking to explain his singularity by looking at his achievements in art, science, psychology, and military strategy (yes), and then employing state of the art left-right brain scientific research to explain his universal genius. Shlain shows that no other person in human history has excelled in so many different areas as Da Vinci and he peels back the layers to explore the how and the why.

Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language

First published in 2000, Words and Rules remains one of Pinker's most provocative and accessible books, illuminating the fascinating relationship between the brain, the mind, and how language makes us humans.

You Are Not Your Brain: The 4-Step Solution for Changing Bad Habits, Ending Unhealthy Thinking, and Taking Control of Your Life

A leading neuroplasticity researcher, Jeffrey M. Schwartz has spent his career studying the structure and neuronal firing patterns of the human brain. He pioneered the first mindfulness-based treatment program for people suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder, teaching patients how to achieve long-term relief from their compulsions.

Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them

A pathbreaking neuroscientist reveals how our social instincts turn Me into Us, but turn Us against Them - and what we can do about it. The great dilemma of our shrinking world is simple: never before have those we disagree with been so present in our lives. The more globalization dissolves national borders, the more clearly we see that human beings are deeply divided on moral lines - about everything from tax codes to sexual practices to energy consumption - and that, when we really disagree, our emotions turn positively tribal.

NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity

What is autism: a lifelong disability or a naturally occurring form of cognitive difference akin to certain forms of genius? In truth, it is both of these things and more - and the future of our society depends on our understanding it. Wired reporter Steve Silberman unearths the secret history of autism, long suppressed by the same clinicians who became famous for discovering it, and finds surprising answers to the crucial question of why the number of diagnoses has soared in recent years.

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading experts on language and the mind, explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits, denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts.

Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in Pursuit of Health

Going against the conventional wisdom reinforced by the medical establishment and Big Pharma that more screening is the best preventative medicine, Dr. Gilbert Welch builds a compelling counterargument that what we need are fewer, not more, diagnoses. Documenting the excesses of American medical practice that labels far too many of us as sick, Welch examines the social, ethical, and economic ramifications of a health-care system that unnecessarily diagnoses and treats patients.

The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures

In The Invisible History of the Human Race, Christine Kenneally draws on cutting-edge research to reveal how both historical artifacts and DNA tell us where we come from and where we may be going. While some books explore our genetic inheritance and some popular television shows celebrate ancestry, this is the first book to explore how everything from DNA to emotions to names and the stories that form our lives are all part of our human legacy.

The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology

Are men literally born to cheat? Does monogamy actually serve women's interests? These are among the questions that have made The Moral Animal one of the most provocative science books in recent years. Wright unveils the genetic strategies behind everything from our sexual preferences to our office politics - as well as their implications for our moral codes and public policies.

The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry

The Psychopath Test is a fascinating journey through the minds of madness. Jon Ronson's exploration of a potential hoax being played on the world's top neurologists takes him, unexpectedly, into the heart of the madness industry. An influential psychologist who is convinced that many important CEOs and politicians are, in fact, psychopaths teaches Ronson how to spot these high-flying individuals by looking out for little telltale verbal and nonverbal clues.

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and points the way forward to mutual understanding. His starting point is moral intuition - the nearly instantaneous perceptions we all have about other people and the things they do. These intuitions feel like self-evident truths, making us righteously certain that those who see things differently are wrong. Haidt shows us how these intuitions differ across cultures, including the cultures of the political left and right.

Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade

In Junkyard Planet, Adam Minter - veteran journalist and son of an American junkyard owner - travels deeply into a vast, often hidden, multibillion-dollar industry that's transforming our economy and environment. Minter takes us from back-alley Chinese computer recycling operations to high-tech facilities capable of processing a jumbo jet's worth of recyclable trash every day. Along the way, we meet an unforgettable cast of characters.

Smoke Signals: A Social History of Marijuana - Medical, Recreational, and Scientific

Martin A. Lee traces the dramatic social history of marijuana, from its origins to its emergence in the 1960s as a defining force in a culture war that has never ceased. Lee describes how the illicit marijuana subculture overcame government opposition and morphed into a dynamic, multibillion-dollar industry. Colorful, illuminating, and at times irreverent, this is a fascinating listen for recreational users and patients, students and doctors, musicians and accountants, Baby Boomers and their kids, and anyone who has ever wondered about the secret life of this ubiquitous herb.

Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla: Biography of a Genius

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), credited as the inspiration for radio, robots, and even radar, has been called the patron saint of modern electricity. Based on original material and previously unavailable documents, this acclaimed book is the definitive biography of the man considered by many to be the founding father of modern electrical technology.

Life's Engines: How Microbes Made Earth Habitable

Paul Falkowski looks "under the hood" of microbes to find the engines of life, the actual working parts that do the biochemical heavy lifting for every living organism on Earth. With insight and humor, he explains how these miniature engines are built - and how they have been appropriated by and assembled like Lego sets within every creature that walks, swims, or flies. Falkowski shows how evolution works to maintain this core machinery of life, and how we and other animals are veritable conglomerations of microbes.

The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum

Temple Grandin teaches listeners the science of the autistic brain, and with it the history and sociology of autism. By being autistic--by being able to look from the inside out and from the outside in--the author's insights are not just unique, they're groundbreaking. According to Temple, our understanding of autism has been perhaps fundamentally wrong for the past 70 years.

The Demon Under The Microscope

The Nazis discovered it. The Allies won the war with it. It conquered diseases, changed laws, and single-handedly launched the era of antibiotics. This incredible discovery was sulfa, the first antibiotic medication. In The Demon Under the Microscope, Thomas Hager chronicles the dramatic history of the drug that shaped modern medicine.

So You've Been Publicly Shamed

From the Sunday Times top ten bestselling author of The Psychopath Test, a captivating and brilliant exploration of one of our world's most underappreciated forces: shame. 'It's about the terror, isn't it?' 'The terror of what?' I said. 'The terror of being found out.' For the past three years, Jon Ronson has travelled the world meeting recipients of high-profile public shamings. The shamed are people like us - people who, say, made a joke on social media that came out badly, or made a mistake at work.

Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness

Drawing on a wealth of his own research and the work of other Lincoln scholars, Shenk reveals how the sixteenth president harnessed his depression to fuel his astonishing success. Lincoln found the solace and tactics he needed to deal with the nation's worst crisis in the "coping strategies" he developed over a lifetime of persevering through depressive episodes and personal tragedies.

Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think

Oxford professor and author Viktor Mayer-Schönberger joins Economist data editor and commentator Kenneth Cukier to deliver insight into the hottest trend in technology. "Big data" makes it possible to instantly analyze and draw conclusions from vast stores of information, enabling revolutionary breakthroughs in business, health, politics, and education. But big data also raises troubling social and privacy concerns sure to be a major talking point in the years ahead.

Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

The adoption of the landmark Voting Rights Act in 1965 enfranchised millions of Americans and is widely regarded as the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement. Yet fifty years later, we are still fighting heated battles over race, representation, and political power - over the right to vote, the central pillar of our democracy. A groundbreaking narrative history of voting rights since 1965, Give Us the Ballot tells the story of what happened after the act was passed.

Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA, and More Tell Us About Crime

The dead talk - to the right listener. They can tell us all about themselves: where they came from, how they lived, how they died, and, of course, who killed them. Forensic scientists can unlock the mysteries of the past and help serve justice using the messages left by a corpse, a crime scene, or the faintest of human traces.

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

All our lives are constrained by limited space and time, limits that give rise to a particular set of problems. What should we do, or leave undone, in a day or a lifetime? How much messiness should we accept? What balance of new activities and familiar favorites is the most fulfilling? These may seem like uniquely human quandaries, but they are not: computers, too, face the same constraints, so computer scientists have been grappling with their version of such problems for decades.

Publisher's Summary

Here, Nassir Ghaemi draws from the careers and personal plights of such notable leaders as Lincoln, Churchill, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., JFK, and others from the past two centuries to build an argument at once controversial and compelling: the very qualities that mark those with mood disorders—realism, empathy, resilience, and creativity—also make for the best leaders in times of crisis. By combining astute analysis of the historical evidence with the latest psychiatric research, Ghaemi demonstrates how these qualities have produced brilliant leadership under the toughest circumstances.

Take realism, for instance: studies show that those suffering depression are better than “normal” people at assessing current threats and predicting future outcomes. Looking at Lincoln, Churchill, and others, Ghaemi shows how depressive realism helped these men tackle challenges. Or consider creativity, a quality psychiatrists have studied extensively in relation to bipolar disorder. This book explains how mania inspired General Sherman and Ted Turner to design and execute their most creative—and successful—strategies.

Ghaemi’s thesis is robust and expansive; he even explains why sane men like Neville Chamberlain and George W. Bush made such poor leaders. Though sane people are better shepherds in good times, sanity can be a liability in moments of crisis. A lifetime without the cyclical torment of mood disorders can leave one ill equipped to endure dire straits.

Ghaemi’s bold, authoritative analysis offers powerful new tools for determining who should lead us. But perhaps most profoundly, he encourages us to rethink our view of mental illness as a purely negative phenomenon. As this book makes clear, the most common types of insanity can confer vital benefits on individuals and society at large—however high the price for those who endure these illnesses.

What the Critics Say

“Nassir Ghamei’s book is a provocative examination of the link between leadership, depression, and mania. It will arouse enormous interest, together with anger and disagreement, and many people will want to read it.” (Paul Johnson, New York Times best-selling author of A History of the American People)

I first heard of Nassir Ghaemi from a lecture on ADHD and Bipolar and then found several friends who recommended this book. It journeys into the lives of key leaders who changed the world, and tells the story which at the time the world was not yet open to hear. With public stigma and misunderstanding, if Kennedy was known to have mental issues and take drugs would the world so widely have accepted him? What about Abraham Lincoln? Why was Hitler so cruel (could drugs have made him worse?)? As a psychiatry resident I work with hundreds of patients who look for hope, meaning in the midst of their mental illness. This book can decrease your stigma of mental illness and also open up your mind to the possibility of mental illness being a positive thing in some situations.

What made the experience of listening to A First-Rate Madness the most enjoyable?

The thesis is so well developed, the gifts which accompany depression and mania create the best crisis leaders. I feel I better understand leaders like Sherman, FDR, Lincoln, JFK and the business leadership of Ted Turner. <br/><br/>Warning---SPOILER ALERT---Don't look down if you haven't read the book yet.

What did you like best about this story?

The contrast between JFK when he was poorly medicated and well medicated. I've often read about the difference between his early and late presidency in terms of critical decision making, but never with such insight.<br/><br/>I really want to follow up with a book on Churchill.

Which scene was your favorite?

I can't say it was exactly my favorite, but I am glad that I know Hitler was taking intravenous methamphetamine five times a day for the last four years of his life. I feel like I better understand how horrific results follow an evil mind wielding limitless power when it is clinically sick and made even worse through severe drug addiction.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

I got choked up at the march on Washington. Looking at the momentous occasion while cognizant of the depression forged empathy of both JFK and Martin Luther King made it all the more moving.

Any additional comments?

I had no idea that JFK nearly died so many times. I liked the comparison of FDR before and after polio.

If your criterion for what makes for a first-rate non-fiction book is for you to change your thinking, then A First-Rate Madness should go into your reading list.

Since antiquity some thinkers have argued that madness and genius are closely related. Ghaemi makes a compelling case for this being true, at least for certain disorders: hyperthymia, bipolar disorder, and depression. Ghaemi also makes an interesting case for how drugs can modulate the disorders to make leaders more effective, with JFK as an example, or can worsen their disorders, showing how Hitler dramatically worsened when he started taking intravenous methamphetamine five times a day.

Ghaemi argues that these first-rate mad leaders are optimal for periods of crisis because of the superior perspective and depth their madness gives them. Correspondingly,Ghaemi argues that while mentally normal leaders are likely to do a better job during non-crisis times, during crises they are prone to blundering because of their shallowness.

Ghaemi presents his argument via the case method, with biographies of several famous leaders going back to the American Civil War. These biographies focus on the leaders' mental state, using the same methodologies used to diagnose living patients.

The result is a tour de force that will appeal to readers interested in leadership, psychology, and biography alike.

A First Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links between Leadrship and Mental Illness is a book you might want to read. Some will find the historical illustrations thin while others may find the analysis provided a stretch in place, but Nassiar Ghaemi has published one interesting book. Ghaemi is the director of the Mood Disorder Program at Tuft Medical School. Using available historical and medical evidence, he argues that various mood disorders can be linked to success in leadership situations. In individual sections he takes up creativity, realism, empathy, and resilience. He finally takes up treatment and mental in general. Along the way, he illustrates his views using the lives of well known persons including Bush, Blair, Nixon, JFK, Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Lincoln Churchill. Just the character sketches that Ghaemi uses is worth the price of the book. This is one of the more thought provoking books that I have read in the past couple of years. Readers will approach leadership differently after completing this volume. The reading of Sean Runnette is excellent.

I was happy with the book until JFK, and following. In fact, I was not able to finish it. I was so disappointed in the erroneous "facts." Even the simplest facts, which I learned in Pharmacology in med school were erroneous. I am very sorry.

Which character – as performed by Sean Runnette – was your favorite?

Does not apply

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from A First-Rate Madness?

Very well written on organized. His writing style is lucid, almost poetic at times. This is no easy feat for someone who I suspect, English was not a first language. He seems to be a compassionate Psychiatrist with a passion for history. Mental illness is to this day, a dirty word, the mentally ill are 'less than.' Historians almost universally ignore the subject. The achievement of some of the great leaders in history are all the more remarkable given the 'handicaps' of Depression, alcoholism and Bi-Polar disorders.

What was one of the most memorable moments of A First-Rate Madness?

Effective psychiatric drugs are of recent origin, getting them to therapeutic levels is no small feat even today. For historic leaders who had to ride of the roller coaster of mania and depression without analysis or medication, the journey to greatness was a torturous path. <br/>Thus the insight of this book, for me, is resilience.<br/><br/>Bill Gates once said that success is a lousy teacher. <br/><br/>In moments of historical crisis, it is often those that have been knocked down time and time again by self inflicted or inherited mental illness that have the resilience to face down crisis one more time.

Which scene was your favorite?

The history of Martin Luther King. King was like a young blue star, burning white hot with a passion for justice and prophetic vision for American, yet he faced fear and death on a daily basis. While mania was the cause of this passion, it might have been part of the actions he took. When the Voting Rights Act of 1964 was passed, King became the<br/>'grand old man' of civil rights. Depression can extinguish even the brightest star.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

That Gandhi, who could relate to, and bring hope to an entire planet, could not relate to his family/son.

Any additional comments?

This is a must read for Historians, Psychiatrists and other mental health / Addiction Professionals. For those who have suffered from mental illness,<br/> or love those who do, <br/>mental illness is not a dirty word, indeed, its fellow traveler, resilience, is something that has come to the rescue of nations more than once.<br/>

Dear Future Readers I wish our history books had shown and explained the insights of how mental illness helped save out world. This books captures that and more. The research done for each chapter is phenomenal. I listened to the chapters on the way to work. It is very hard for me to read because of my degree of blindness.

If history had shown mental illness in this positive light from the beginning, I don't believe the stigma attached would have even developed line it is today.

Speaking as a physician we see it as just another disease that needs to be treated. But the world continues to call that person "crazy". But in reality it is just a severe chemical imbalance that they were born with. They can't help it. Until you have a family member or a friend who has gone through this, you will never understand the daily struggle of cyclic emotions they endure.

People need to have empathy for the mentally ill. That is completely lacking till today. They are the "dark geniuses" of our world and with that comes massive brain power, amazing creativity, true realism, amazing peripheral vision and boundless empathy. They move the world. Without them we are ordinary. They have and will continue shape our lives everyday for the better.

My hats off to the author for writhing this so eloquently and truthfully. Dr Ghaemi, thank you for writhing this book. It was just simply awesome ....

Anyone who finds the inner workings of the mind of interest will enjoy this book. It sees mental illness from a perspective not often contemplated. It demonstrates that, for good or bad, we owe much of our history to the mental illness of various leaders.

This book was outstanding and gave me tremendous insight into myself and others. As a leader, former elected official, and sufferer of bipolar depression, this has given me knowledge and insight that years of therapy and conversations with doctors never have.

The insights and examples provided brought both insight and comfort when reflecting on my experiences.

First, I'm a teacher. In full disclosure I'm also a collector of knowledge. Teacher deal with mental health issues daily in the classroom, with coworkers and personally. This book was interesting because of the focused dissection of specific personality types. Especially dealing with examples from history that have set the course for many nations. If history, psychology, social structure, or politics interests you this is worth a read.